


eros to agape

by northernsdownpour



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Pre-The Raven King, around bllb, gratituous and gross misuse of types of love, honestly just really bitter about adam and blue's relationship, major canonical character death, sad tree and tree forest intern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10492215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/northernsdownpour/pseuds/northernsdownpour
Summary: Flowers adorned the foot of Persephone’s coffin. They were lovely — white roses and calla lilies and daffodils and dreamed flowers given by Gansey and Ronan and even Adam, once he scraped enough money to buy as much flowers as he can afford, which isn’t much at all — but the way they were arranged was off-putting, hesitant, as if the people giving them didn’t know the person at all. That was half a lie. Persephone never told anyone what her favorite flower is.or: in which adam and blue talk at persephone's funeral





	

**Author's Note:**

> hey! essentially, i finished reading trk a long while and it was honestly good but?? adam and blue's relationship deserved better?? i just wanted these two to actually talk and not fight and it got out of my hand i'm sorry. anyways, here's my first trc fic! enjoy!
> 
> all mistakes are mine.

 

Flowers adorned the foot of Persephone’s coffin. They were lovely — white roses and calla lilies and daffodils and dreamed flowers given by Gansey and Ronan and even Adam, once he scraped enough money to buy as much flowers as he can afford, which isn’t much at all — but the way they were arranged was off-putting, hesitant, as if the people giving them didn’t know the person at all. That was half a lie. Persephone never told anyone what her favorite flower is.   

Funerals weren’t Adam’s forte — he’s never been to one, not even Noah’s —but he’s brought his meager flowers, paid his respects, and sat at the back. It was easy. They were many women and he was lonesome. They allowed him to fade in the background and he’d let them. He’d let them and the… _impossibility_ of the situation wash over him.

Persephone was dead. Persephone was _dead. Persephone_ was dead.

Adam knew death. He believed in it, but it was stuff of dreams, too far away to be considered a real, distinct threat. It happened to old men and women on their rocking chairs in their cul-de-sacs, it happened in a too-clean hospital room smelling of medicines too expensive for Adam to afford. It doesn’t happen to ethereal Fox Way women with everlasting hair in a summer day.

The Fox Way women were invulnerable, untouchable. The Fox Way women were safe. The Fox Way women couldn’t do anything as mortal as dying.

_Gansey is going to die, too_. But Gansey was the same as the Fox Way women. They don’t die. They get immortalized, painted and installed and hung up.

“Parrish.” It was Gansey. Gansey the boy, Gansey the grieving. Ronan was by his side, and both were in their suits, rendering them impeccable. They’d found Adam on the backyard of 300 Fox Way, under a tree, its leaves providing ample shade from the already setting sun

“Gansey.” _He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to die._ It still didn’t change the fact that Gansey was here, alive as ever.

He’s going to die, and yet he looked unkillable.

He can’t die. He _cannot._

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Adam shrugged in response. He caught Ronan’s eye. There was something tumultuous in his gaze, a kind of understanding that comes with a first-hand experience at death, or maybe a first-hand experience of handling Adam Parrish. He gave Adam a sharp nod.

“Come on, man,” said Ronan. “Parrish needs his alone time.”

Gansey run a thumb on his lower lip and nodded. The long shadows of Henrietta, Virginia followed the two of them as they left.

Adam Parrish was lonesome.  Lonely, lost, alone. Lonesome.

He was deep in his thoughts when he’d heard a rustle. He looked up and met Blue’s eyes.

“Adam,” she said. She’d dressed nicely, an overlarge shredded black shirt over a white top. An assortment of clips adorned her hair. “I thought I’d find you here. Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

She took a good long look at him, long enough to make him squirm. He suddenly became aware of his strange features, his fragile eyes, his fading and faded black overcoat. _I am unknowable_ , he thought, but under Blue Sargent’s gaze it hadn’t felt like that. He felt knowable, and known. Not-lonesome.

She sat down beside him. It was Blue’s beech tree, he remembered, and she looked like she belonged. “It’s okay, you know,” she said. “It’s okay to grieve.” When Adam failed to reply, she added, “She loved you.”

Adam tensed. Love and loved. Love was a privilege, and Adam knew he hadn’t had it in himself to love as Blue Sargent had. To love as fiercely and fearlessly as Ronan and Gansey, as the Fox Way women. Love was a foreign concept, a new word on his Henrietta-bred lips. It was one lesson Adam was bound to fail.                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Blue hesitated, and reached out to grasp his hand. “Persephone loved you. We all do.” She paused, as if testing whether or not he’d pull his hand away. He didn’t. “ _I_ love you.”

“You love Gansey, though.” There it was, their biggest secret. He heard Blue hiss out a breath and made a move as though to tug her hand away, but Adam held on. “It’s okay.”

“It’s a different kind of love,” Blue said. She hadn’t denied it. She’d had her armor on, her anger just below the surface in case worse comes to worst. “It doesn’t mean I love you or Noah or Ronan any less.”

“I know,” he said. “Blue it’s okay.”

“You’re not angry?”

“Why would I be?” He looked into Blue’s eyes, wide and earnest and so vulnerable. The words came out of his mouth in a rush, before he had any time to back out. “I’m sorry. For everything. For that thing in the apartment. For making you feel like I would be angry. For making you feel like I can’t be trusted. I’m sorry.”

There was a barest of pauses, and Blue replied, “I’m sorry, too.”

“You deserve better that that.”

Blue smiled. “You’ve changed. But you’ve also didn’t. Do you get me?”

Adam did. This is Blue when they first met. Blue, the waitress. Blue, the psychic’s daughter. Blue, the amplifier. But she was a lot more than that now. She was the Blue who helped them with Glendower, the Blue who went to Kavinsky’s Fourth of July party, the Blue who’d cut him in the cave. Not Blue the girlfriend, but Blue the _friend_.

_Persephone loved you. We all do._ I _love you._

“Well,” he said, “I love you, too.” It tasted rough on his tongue, unpracticed, like he wanted to say _poison_ or _danger_ or _gun_ but instead said _love_. It tripped on his throat and came out scathed, but it was a start.

Blue beamed at him and squeezed his hand.

“You love Gansey, though?” he asked. “Love?”

Her smile fell from her face and she pulled out her hand. She pursed his lips. “I…don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.”

She raised a thumb on her lower lip, a gesture that reminded Adam of Gansey. Blue, having noticed it herself, brought down her hand hastily.

“How did you know it was love?”

It was a different question he wanted an answer, and Blue intercepted it. _Knowable._

“You deserve it, Adam,” she said. “You deserve every single ounce of love you get. Don’t you go around thinking you don’t deserve it, or the hard way is always the right way. Pain isn’t a given. You know that, right?”

Blue’s Henrietta accent had come out in the middle of her sentence and she didn’t bother to hide it.

Adam fought the urge to say, _But I don’t know any other way._

“We’re always here. That’s love. It’s unconditional,” continued Blue. “ _Agape,_ Adam. Unconditional love. Don’t forget that.”

Here, under the shade of Blue’s beech tree with the setting sun’s light around them, Adam was struck over what a fearsome creature Blue Sargent is, what a paradox she is.  He remembered how they’d first met, the disastrous fight at Nino’s, the ley line adventures. He’d loved her and he never stopped loving her.

_A different kind of love_. Blue Sargent was his friend, his best friend, and he loved her as much as he loved Gansey and Noah and Ronan. As much as he loved Persephone.

So he tested it again. “I love you.” It came out smoother than the first time. Not as smooth as Blue’s, but it’s a start. It’s _starting_.

Blue smiled and threw her arms around him with such a force he staggered. His arms were frozen at his side, but he wrapped them around her too. She rested her head at his shoulder and he placed his chin on the top of her head. Belatedly, he realized Blue was crying. Her body shook with sobs and her arms wrapped around him tighter.

Belatedly, Adam realized there were tears streaming down his face, too.

All too soon, Blue disentangled herself from Adam. Her eyes were puffy, her nose red. She gave him a watery smile. “I’m sorry.”

Adam wiped a tear away. “It’s okay.”

She patted his shoulder and looked at the wet portion of his coat. “I ruined your coat.”

“It’s okay,” he repeated.

“I miss her,” Blue said.  “I keep on waking up and hoping I’d see her again, but I don’t. Persephone can’t die. Persephone don’t die. Everything happened so fast, I can barely process it.”

_I know._ “I talked to her before she died. At an old store. She said that, at first, she thought I might replace one of them in case something happens.”

A pause. “What did you say?”

_I didn’t_. They were something different about the three women of Fox Way.  They were invincible, indestructible, and they just can’t be replaced. Adam hadn’t had it in himself to replace anyone.

Besides, he was leaving.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Blue already knew.

A silence enveloped them, as comfortable as the shade around them, and then Blue piped up, “We were cleaning Persephone’s room, and she left this for you.”

She slid a familiar deck of tarot card towards him. Adam was already shaking his head. “I can’t take that. Please. Don’t let me take that.”

Blue’s voice turned to goo. “It has your name on it. Please, Adam.” She turned the deck around and on it was a scrawl, in all capital letter, written as if in a haste: _ADAM_.

Adam could feel hot tears gather up behind his eyes, blurring his vision. “Don’t.”

“Please.” There were unfallen tears on Blue’s eyes, and one of them fell down her cheek. Another one queued up.

“I can’t take it, Blue!”

“I know it’s hard, but please. Persephone wants you to have it.”

At it, the tears fell. They fell and they fell and they fell. He didn’t know if he was crying for Persephone or Blue or Gansey or himself. Blue touched his arm gently, gingerly, as though he might break any second.

Adam felt fragile, breakable. The tears couldn’t stop falling.

“You were closer to her,” he said. “I don’t even have the right to feel this bad. I don’t have the right to act like this hurt so much more that it does to you or Calla or —”

“Stop this right now, Adam Parrish,” Blue said, properly angry. “It doesn’t matter if we’re closer or not. It’s okay to grieve for her. Respect her wishes. _Take this._ ”

Adam pocketed Persephone’s tarot card. It felt hundred times heavier than it is.

“I asked her how to save Gansey, Blue,” Adam admitted. “We’re going to find Glendower and I’m going to ask for Gansey’s life. I’m not stopping until I find him. Gansey can’t die. He can’t.”

Blue was crying again. Adam wondered if this is how they’re going to spend the night: crying and exhausted from all the truth they have to carry by themselves. Tired from all the deaths there is and the deaths to come.

He wondered how Blue can handle it, knowing Gansey would die and befriending them anyway. Entangling herself in their mess, getting involved when she could just avoid them altogether. If anything, Blue Sargent was strong.

“We’re going to have to start a _Save Gansey_ brigade, now do we?” he joked, hoping to lighten the mood or at least make Blue smile. It worked. Blue gave a laugh, a little wan thing, but a laugh nonetheless.

“Damn right we will,” she said. “I’m making the posters and t-shirts. What will you do?”

“I’ll hand them out. I’m going to hang a giant banner right outside St. Agnes.”

“I’m going to punch every bee I see.”

“I’ll punch all the bees. I don’t give a shit.”

They laughed. It was easy, falling in a pattern like this. In this moment, they weren’t Blue Sargent the amplifier and Adam Parrish the magician, nor were they exes anymore. They weren’t even Blue and Adam. They were just a boy and a girl with dirt for hair and Henrietta in their veins, not a thought given for the future and its consequences.

They were both painfully aware of the future, but it was nice to pretend, even for just a night, that they were free. Free of the responsibility and the magic and the ley line. Free to be normal. A tear escaped Blue’s eyes and Adam flicked it away.

The door creaked open and Gansey’s voice said, “Jane? I—”

He noticed Blue and Adam, under the canopy of the beech tree, face-to-face. At the sight of Gansey, more tears rolled down Blue’s cheek.

“Blue?” Gansey said, perplexed. “Why are you crying?”

“You’re not wearing any of your disgusting polo shirts and your boat shoes,” Blue said, as earnest as she can. “I’m so happy.”

Adam laughed, a helpless little wail of laughter.

“C’mere,” Blue said. As soon as Gansey sat down beside Blue, she threw an arm around him, and another around Adam.

“Impromptu group hug,” she said, and Adam and Gansey let out a breath of laughter, each throwing an arm around the other.

“ Gansey, what’s taking you so lo—” The three of them turned to look at Ronan. Chainsaw perched comfortably on his shoulder. “What the hell is this, maggot? Getting sentimental?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Come here, you dick.”

His Henrietta accent rolled out, but for once, he didn’t care. Chainsaw took off to settle in one of the trees as Ronan ambled towards them. Gansey removed his arm around Adam to make space for Ronan. He then put his arm under Ronan’s. Adam did the same.

“Now, we’re only missing Noah,” Gansey said.

“We’re doing this again once Noah’s here,” Blue said.

“Fuck off, Sargent,” Ronan replied, but it was lacking the venom it normally contained. He broke off the circle. “You done being sappy?”

“Fuck off, Lynch.”

“We’re leaving, Jane,” Gansey said. “You coming, Adam?”

Adam thought of Persephone’s tarot cards, heavy in his pocket, and of Blue and Blue’s family. Of Gansey and Noah and Ronan. _His_.

_Agape_. Unconditional love. He looked around him and realized there was nothing he wouldn’t do for anyone in this room.

Unconditional.

“Yeah, just a minute.”

_Agape._

**Author's Note:**

> hope you like that! my ya tumblr is [here](http://maycastellan.tumblr.com), where i post trc and other ya stuff.  
> 


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